Bonum Certa Men Certa

Patent Fronts Against Google

Do not disturb



Summary: Apple, Microsoft, Nokia et al. and the fight against Android

Apple has been building a patent portfolio with Microsoft. It took many of Novell's patents and also Nortel's. It paid Nokia for patents, which Microsoft later passed (with Elop) to patent trolls that can sue Google. At least one is already suing. Apple managed to sign a patent deal with HTC and it will need to compensate Samsung, also for cheeky litigation followed by no sincere apology (maybe the same will be required in the US later). To quote:





The court was also unhappy with how long it took Apple to post its Samsung apology in UK newspapers. The original order was given on October 18th and was supposed to be carried out as soon as possible. It wasn’t. In the order, the judge noted, “I hope that the lack of integrity involved in this incident is entirely atypical of Apple.”

Apparently, this sanction is the highest there is in the “loser pays” category in the UK, and Apple will have to pay for everything the lawyers billed to Samsung from day one of the trial. This not only includes legal fees, but parking, phone calls, and other miscellaneous charges. Yikes, that’s some expensive snark.


Apple is losing the plot, losing respect, but most importantly losing focus. Price advantage is being eroded too:

Apple Learns That Suing A Key Supplier May Not Be So Smart; Samsung Jacks Up Prices On Apple



Apple may be happy it won the first round of its patent fight against Samsung in the US (it's not faring quite so well elsewhere around the globe), but these things have consequences. Besides being a competitor, Samsung is also a key Apple supplier... and it appears that Samsung is now using that to its advantage, jacking up the price on a mobile processor supplied to Apple by 20%. The report notes that Apple pushed back initially, but after realizing it couldn't find a reasonable replacement, agreed to the new prices.


Site contributor's iophk says that Microsoft is "Trying to spread out the attacks via layers of proxies" in relation to the news about Vringo, which is getting money from Google:

Vringo Inc., owner of technology developed by the Lycos Inc. search engine, said it has been awarded about $30 million from Google and some Google customers, including AOL, over patented ways to generate advertising revenue.

The companies infringed two patents owned by Vringo, a federal jury in Norfolk, Va., decided last week.

Vringo claimed Google’s Adsense program, which is also used as the advertising platform for third-party companies and AOL Search Marketplace, infringed the patents.


What ought to be mentioned is that Microsoft or Nokia recently gave this troll a lot of patents. This was done silently.

It is going to be interesting to see how CPTN uses Novell's patents to justify spendings. The old Novell is still seeking justice:



Boies Schiller is in the house on behalf of Novell in its appeal against Microsoft in the antitrust case regarding WordPerfect, the firm's name appearing on a new motion asking the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit for permission to file an overlength appeals brief. Novell asked for 26,500 words. Microsoft did not oppose.


WordPerfect patents might now be Microsoft's ammunition, e.g. to use to defend the Office monopoly.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/09/2023: Preparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and 9.3 Beta
Links for the day
We Need to Liberate the Client Side and Userspace Too
Lots of work remains to be done
Recent IRC Logs (Since Site Upgrade)
better late than never
Techrights Videos Will be Back Soon
We want do publish video without any of the underlying complexity and this means changing some code
Microsoft is Faking Its Financial Performance, Buying Companies Helps Perpetuate the Big Lies (or Pass the Debt Around)
Our guess is that Microsoft will keep pretending to be huge, even as the market share of Windows (and other things) continues to decrease
Techrights Will Tell the Story (Until Next Year!) of How Since 2022 It Has Been Under a Coordinated Attack by a Horde of Vandals and Nutcases
People like these belong in handcuffs and behind bars (sometimes they are) and our readers still deserve to know the full story. It's a cautionary tale for other groups and sites
Why It Became Essential to Split GNU/Linux Stories from the Rest
These sites aren't babies anymore. In terms of age, they're already adults.
Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy - A Techrights Perspective
If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed
Google (and the Likes Of It) Will Cause Catastrophic Information Loss Rather Than Organise the World's Information
Informational and cultural losses due to technological plunder
Links 28/09/2023: GNOME 45 Release Party, 'Smart' Homes Orphaned
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
Xen, breaches, and more
GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100
Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32
Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now
We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118
Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world